The Biggest Pandemics in History and How They Affected People’s Lifes

The Biggest Pandemics in History are diseases that had a massive outbreak and killed a lot of people. It's a disease that spreads worldwide and I'll be talking about a couple that I found interesting, there are tons more pandemics that won't be talked about. I will be talking about the Black Death (Bubonic plague), the 1918 Spanish Flu, HIV/AIDS (Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome). I will be talking about there death number and the rate it went, how fast it spread throughout the world. Also how it came to be, who discovered it, if there are any cures or treatments for it today, what it is and what it does to you and who was the most affected by it.

One of the biggest pandemics was the black dead because ¨In the epidemics of the late nineteenth century, between 60 and 90 percent of those who caught the bubonic plague died¨. That goes to show you how drastic it was, and the death throughout Europe is believed to be 75-200 million people have died because of the Black Death. The estimated amount of deaths in the world stands at about 450-600 million people. The world population was 350-375 million after Black Death hit. The pandemic lasted for 3 years, 1347-1350.

In Europe the estimated death percentage was between 40-50 percent of their Watson 2population, which is nearly half of Europe wiped out. “The rate of mortality from the Black Death varied from place to place”. The death rates in Southern Europe in cities like Spain, Italy, and France was at like 70-80% of the 3 years of the Black Death. 65% of China was wiped out by the plague, with the population standing at 120 million in 1330 and then leaving 90 million by 1393. This shows you how deadly Black Death was back then it literally wiped out most of the populations around the world. It is believed that the black death spreaded very quickly and killed many people in such a dramatic speed that it had to be airborne «No disease in recorded history has carried the totemic power of plague».

People think it was transmitted through the sneezes and coughs of humans. During the Middle Ages, European cities were ideal centers for the disease. They were dirty, with poor cleanliness. Even the wealthy people lived in close quarters and had limited amount of hugube product. Although rural populations suffered as well, the deaths in the cities was a big deal as well. The Black Death is thought to been an drastic outbreak of the bubonic plague, caused by bacteria carried by fleas that lived on rats. The rodents spread the plague and it hit Britain In 1348. It spreaded through dirty cities as the doctors were useless at this time. They didn't know how the disease was caused or how to cure it. Different countries invaded other countries, meaning they brought the plague with them giving it to the other country. «Black Death may have been viral in origin. »

The first historical record of bubonic plague is in Central Asia in 1338 and 1339. It reached China and India by 1346. One legend that's not true says that the Mongols contaminated the city of Kaffa by shooting infected corpses over the walls. It is Watson 3more common that rats carried infected fleas into the town. Flee ships then carried infected rats to Constantinople, Italy, and Marseilles during the year 1347. In 1348, the first outbreaks appeared in England. Bubonic plague affects the lymph nodes. Within 3 to 7 days of exposure to plague bacteria, you will develop kinda like flu symptoms such as fever, headache, chills, weakness, and swollen, tender lymph glands. What it will also do to you, it will cause you to have stomach pain, diarrhea, nausea, fever and chills, extreme weakness, bleeding that won't stop, shock, skin turning black (g. People also experience painful, swollen lymph glands, called buboes.

These typically appear in the groin, armpits, neck, or site of the insect bite or scratch. The buboes are what give bubonic plague its name. The plague is a life-threatening condition that requires urgent care. If caught and treated early, it’s a treatable disease using antibiotics that are commonly available. With no treatment, bubonic plague can multiply in the bloodstream (causing septicemic plague) or in the lungs (causing pneumonic plague). Death can occur within 24 hours after the appearance of the first symptom.

Treatment usually involves strong and effective antibiotics such as gentamicin or ciprofloxacin, intravenous fluids, oxygen, and, sometimes, breathing support. Treatment is continued for several weeks after fever resolves. Europe suffered the most. By the end of 1348, Germany, France, England, Italy, and the low countries had all felt the plague. Norway was infected in 1349, and Eastern European countries began to become victim during the early 1350s. Europe was hit the worst it swept away half of Europe.

 The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, was the deadliest in history, infected an aproximate amout of 500 million people worldwide about half of the planet’s population and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675, 000 Americans. The 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, the United States and some of Asia before spreading around the world. «Outbreaks of the flu occurred in nearly every inhabited part of the world, first in ports, then spreading from drffrent along the main transportation routes. » A flu pandemic, such as the one in 1918, occured when a new flu strain for which there's no immunity to it appears and spreads quickly from person to person around the globe. It spreads very quickly, through people be around other people, coughing, sneezing, drinking or eating after someone who has the virus.

Even talking to a person with thee virus, people have the little droplets when they talk which is putting the virus in the air which makes it to be spread airborne as well. Flu is a virus that's spread from person to person» A strange form of diseases of epidemic character has appeared in Madrid. ¨ It came from birds and other animals such as pigs, and new virus strainds of the flu came to to Europe from Southeast Asia. That's the global pattern. But close to home, the flu is a virus that we have in our throats and we give it to each other when we're in close contact and also when we get the virus on our hands and touch each other and touch our noses and our mouths and that way we can spread the virus from one person to another.

The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic was so deadly because it signals off a ton of immune response in the human body which made it destroy its own cells. The Spanish Flu typically causes fever and/or chills, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle or body aches, headaches, and fatigue. Remember, the flu is caused by a group of viruses that infect the respiratory system. As a result, effects on the body often focus on the throat, nose, and lungs. At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this flu or the prevention of it spreading. Researchers later discovered what made the 1918 pandemic so deadly: In many victims, the flu virus had tooken over their lungs and caused pneumonia. Most of the death was caused by untreated flu which fluttered into pneumonia and killed you.

More people died of flu in a single year than in three years of the Black Death from 1347 to 1350. 'Spanish Flu' the flu of 1918-1919 was a global disaster. In the fall of 1918 the Great War in Europe was winding down and peace was on the horizon. Then all of a sudden the Spanish came in with a bang and whipped out majority of the populations around the world. It killed more people than the Great War, at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It wasn't just a cold it was one of the worst pandemics.

The HIV/Aids virus didn't really have drastic death rates like the other pandemics, it was more of who had it and don't know it. As of 2016 36. 7 million people were living with the virus, and of that only 1 million died from it. From the start of the pandemic 76. 1 million people were infected by the viruses and out of that amount only 35 million people died from it. As I was saying before AIDS/HIV didn't really have a great number of death rates like they did in all the other pandemics so far. The HIV/AIDS virus doesn't spread that quickly. They are only spreaded through bodily fluids, such as seman, vaginal fluid, breast milk, and blood. This is mostly spreaded through sexyal entercourse. This could not be spreaded by tears, sweat, feces, urine. They also can be spreaded by the blood by sharing injection equipment when shooting drugs, getting tattoos or body piercings with unsterilized needles, accidental needle sticks, blood transfusions, splashing blood in your eyes.

No one is really sure how the virus came about. Some people have there suspicion that a hunter was hunting for food and killed a infected chimpanzee and got the infection that easy and spread to other people. There's also another theory that a villager with no obvious signs of the infection might have traveled by river to a bigger town or city. In that new site, more people could have picked up the virus and spread it widely. People may never know exactly how HIV was able to keep going at first. But after it spread for many years within western Africa, scientists suspected the disease jumped across the Atlantic Ocean when an infected person moved to Haiti.

Once there, it finally bubbled over and became a global threat. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a virus that causes the condition acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) also known as the “slow virus”. The virus attacks an immune system cell in the body, known as CD4 helper lymphocyte cells. HIV destroys these cells, making it harder for your body to fight off other infections making you «vulnerable to a variety of other infections. 'I realized that if there ever were a disease made for the Surgeon General, it was AIDS.'

There's no cure for HIV/AIDS, but many different drugs are available to control the virus. Such treatment is called antiretroviral therapy. Each class of drug blocks the virus in different ways. ART is now recommended for everyone, regardless of CD4 T cell counts. It's recommended to combine three drugs from two classes to avoid creating drug-resistant strains of HIV. With these viruses it kinda like once you got it you are stuck with it for life.

There are medicines out there that you can take to control it and make you undetectable. HIV and AIDS in Africa continue to be long-term development challenges. East Africa and southern Africa are the regions hardest hit by HIV, it is home to over 50% of the total number of people living with HIV in the world. There has been considerable political and financial commitment to fighting the epidemic in this region, with some countries such as South Africa and Kenya seeing dramatic scaling up of prevention, treatment and care services. However, many countries in this region are still reliant on donor funding to finance their HIV response.